have made one eruption into the Baltic by the Lymfiord, although they have been now again excluded. It is also affirmed that other channels were open in historical times which are now silted up.[1]
If we next turn to the remains of vertebrata preserved in the mounds, we find that here also, as in the Danish peat mosses, all the quadrupeds belong to species known to have inhabited Europe within the memory of man. No remains of the mammoth, or rhinoceros, or of any extinct species appear, except those of the wild bull (Bos Urus Linn., or Bos primigenius Bojanus), which are in such numbers as to prove that the species was a favourite food of the ancient people. But as this animal was seen by Julius Cæsar, and survived long after his time, its presence alone would not go far to prove the mounds to be of high antiquity. The Lithuanian aurochs or bison (Bos Bison L., Bos priscus Boj., which has escaped extirpation only because protected by the Russian Czars, surviving in one forest in Lithuania) has not yet been met with, but will no doubt be detected hereafter, as it has been already found in the Danish peat. The beaver, long since destroyed in Denmark, occurs frequently, as does the seal (Phoca Gryppus Fab.), now very rare on the Danish coast. With these are mingled bones of the red deer and roe, but the rein-deer has not yet been found. There are also the bones of many carnivora, such as the lynx, fox, and wolf, but no signs of any domesticated animals except the dog. The long bones of the larger mammalia have been all broken as if by some instrument, in such a manner as to allow of the extraction of the marrow, and the gristly parts have been gnawed off, as if by dogs, to whose agency is also attributed the almost entire absence of the bones of young birds and of the smaller bones and softer
- ↑ See Morlot, Bulletin de la Société Vaudoise des Sci. Nat. t. vi.
